My friends and I are all working professionals and rarely get time to meet up and chat so NP has been a good sort of socialising + side fun for us. However, we’ve noticed that the game can be pretty consuming (if you allow it) with constant checks etc during work. We’ve played the game currently on real time with all standard settings.

Apart from good ol’ will power (which might lead to a lost star or two) if there were a combination of settings that would allow us to only dedicate a small window of time to make moves/discuss? I’ve yet to try out the turn-based option for this game as we are still currently finishing our first one and I’d like to have all this sorted before starting the next one (as a few aren’t interested if its this time consuming).

Though from just reading the information turn based with a 24 hour window might be best? What are the differences with turn based to real time? I imagine that unlike real time you don’t need to be on the hour checking for reactionary moves and you just react per player move tick.

I’ve also thought of maybe pausing the game during the day and then proccing ticks at night in a 4 hour window then pausing again before bed, but this feels arguably too difficult for what we want.

I’ve also thought of maybe pausing the game during the day and then proccing ticks at night in a 4 hour window then pausing again before bed, but this feels arguably too difficult for what we want.

When you play a turn based game the turns will advance when the turn deadline is reached or when all players have submitted their turn. So it’s possible to do many turns over a short span of time as long as everyone is submitting their turns. You could even set turn size at 1 tick to get the same game granularity as real time, though I suggest trying with the default first.

If you don’t mind, could you also explain the difference in how turn based/real time games operate (like the actual gameplay) because our biggest issue was having to constantly check throughout the day to ensure no-one was sending ships to us without our knowledge.

Does this happen in turn based? How does sending carriers to a location in X hours work? Or are you suggesting that 1 tick = 1 turn which means you are able to react ‘by the hour’ (in game time)

The default option is 1 turn = 8 ticks. In this case, you will be able to see what is happening and react every 8 ticks, but at no times in between. This does lead to situations where someone could launch a fleet at tick = 8, and you wouldn’t know about it until tick = 16. However, everyone is under this exact same constraint, so everyone is equally advantaged AND disadvantaged by this.

Customisability allows you to change it so that 1 turn = 1 tick. In this case, if someone launched a fleet at tick = 8, you would know about it at tick = 9. While this does have the advantage of allowing you to react for every tick, it does have the disadvantage in that games run much, much slower unless some time is put aside to dedicate to playing 5-10 turns in a single sitting.

The actual gameplay is similar/same as RT games, so much so that you could consider RT games “a turn-based game with one-tick increments and one hour deadline per turn.” In turn based with Y ticks/turn, it works by waiting until all players have given orders (or the turn deadline passes), then simulating Y ticks in a row, before finally displaying the result after those Y ticks. Cycles happen every set number of ticks, as usual, and fleet movement takes the same number of ticks as before.

With sending carriers to a location in X hours:
In RT games, if you wanted to attack a star, you need to check for possible enemy reinforcements that are X – 1 or less hours away (or else they will be able to protect their star). In turn-based games, if you launch at a star that is less than or equal to Y hours away (where Y is number of ticks per turn, i.e. X≤Y), then the fleet will arrive and do battle before the next turn, and you will only get the report of that battle once all Y ticks have been simulated. (You will, however, be told which tick the battle took place in.) However, if X>Y, the enemy player will be able to see the fleet in hyperspace Y ticks later, and will then have X – Y ticks to get reinforcements to the attacked star.